Its bearings were more definitely realised by the Abbe Terrasson, whom I have just named.

A geometer and a Cartesian, he took part in the controversy in its latest stage, when La Motte and Madame Dacier were the principal antagonists.

The human mind, he said, has had its infancy and youth; its maturity began in the age of Augustus; the barbarians arrested its course till the Renaissance; in the seventeenth century, through the illuminating philosophy of Descartes, it passed beyond the stage which it had attained in the Augustan age, and the eighteenth century should surpass the seventeenth.
Cartesianism is not final; it has its place in a development.

It was made possible by previous speculations, and it will be succeeded by other systems.

We must not pursue the analogy of humanity with an individual man and anticipate a period of old age.